brainpopfandomcom-20200223-history
Homer
Homer is a BrainPOP English/Social Studies video which launched on March 4, 2008. Summary Appearances *Moby *Tim Transcript and Quiz *Homer/Transcript *Homer/Quiz Trivia * The lines that Tim are reciting are from The Odyssey. FYI Unsolved Mysteries One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of literature is the Homeric question: Did Homer really exist, or did the Iliad and Odyssey emerge out of centuries of tellings and re-tellings by dozens of poets and storytellers? It’s difficult to tell, since the Ancient Greeks didn’t have an alphabet—and thus didn’t have any written records—until the 8th century B.C.E. And the first written mentions of Homer, which are dated to the 5th and 6th centuries B.C.E., describe him as living in the distant past. If Homer existed, he may have been arhapsode, or professional performer of epic poetry, who dictated his poems to a scribe right around the time that the Greek alphabet came into use (sometime around 800 B.C.E.). Either way, the Ancient Greeks believed that he was a blind storyteller who was from either the Greek island of Chios or the coast of present-day Turkey. The name “Homer” is synonymous with the Greek word for “hostage,” leading some to believe that Homer was either a hostage himself or the descendant of prisoners of war. Those who believe a real Homer did exist point to the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey are written in similar styles—they say that the Iliad reflects the work of a younger poet, while the Odyssey was written by the same person at a later date. Some scholars even believe that the real Homer was a woman! Arts And Entertainment The Iliad and the Odyssey have been adapted into an amazing number of movies and plays. Here are some of the highlights! Troy, made in 2004, turns the Iliad into a big-budget action spectacle. In fact, it cost $180 million to make. Brad Pitt dons a short skirt to play Achilles, but the script deviates widely from Homer’s classic tale. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (pictured), made in 2000, re-imagines the Odyssey as the adventures of a trio of escaped convicts in 1920s Mississippi. George Clooney plays a smooth-talking con man who leaves a chain gang to reunite with his wife, Penny. The Golden Apple is a 1954 musical play that sets the events of the Iliad and Odyssey in Washington State at the turn of the 20th century. After an unfaithful wife named Helen runs off with a traveling salesman, it’s up to a soldier named Ulysses to go get her back. The plot of Cold Mountain, an Oscar-winning 2003 film, is based on The Odyssey. A Civil War soldier played by Jude Law encounters a number of obstacles on his journey back to his fiancee’s North Carolina farm, and must fight off a group of armed guards once he finally makes it home. Did You Know In 1922, Irish author James Joyce (pictured) published one of the most important literary works of all time. It was called ''Ulysses,'' which is the Latin name for Odysseus. Ulysses was more than 1,000 pages long and shocked readers with its references to bodily functions and sexuality. In fact, it was banned in both Great Britain and the United States for 15 years. However, it amazed critics and scholars, who were struck by its creative language and structure. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked it as the best English-language novel of the 20th century. Ulysses is a “mock-heroic” novel, glorifying the activities and concerns of everyday people in the elaborate style of epic poetry. It re-imagines the Odyssey''as a series of everyday events taking place in Dublin, Ireland on the day of June 16, 1904. Odysseus is represented by an ordinary man named Leopold Bloom, whose wanderings through the city recall the Greek hero’s adventures. The structure of the novel parallels the structure of the ''Odyssey, and each chapter recalls a specific event in Odysseus’s journey. For example, the Cyclops is represented by a mean old man whom Bloom encounters at a pub, while Telemachus is represented by a young man named Stephen Dedalus, who’s desperately in search of a father figure. If you study English in college, you’ll probably read Ulysses at some point—or at least try to read it! Many readers have felt that the book's stream-of-consciousness style and obscure references can be very difficult to understand. Around The World Although scholars aren’t sure if Homer was a real person, they’re pretty sure that Troy—the setting of Homer’s Iliad—was a real place. For more than a century, archaeologists have been exploring a site called Hisarlik'''on the northwestern coast of Turkey. Ruins were first discovered there in the 1870s, and since then, archaeologists have discovered a number of cities or fortresses built on top of one another. The earliest ruins, called '''Troy I, date from around 3000 B.C.E., while the latest,Troy IX, date to 100 B.C.E. In the middle is Troy VIIa, which existed during the 13th century B.C.E. Troy VIIa is believed to be the city Homer described in the Iliad. Troy VIIa was entirely enclosed by thick stone walls, with a big defensive ditch or moat carved into the bedrock surrounding it. Its towers were as big as 18 meters across at their bases, and stretched 9 meters high (very tall for that time). The city is estimated to have had a total area of 200,000 square meters and a population of between 5,000 and 10,000—making it a large and important city for the time. Most interestingly, Troy VIIa appears to have been destroyed around 1180 B.C.E. There’s evidence of a major fire, and most archaeologists believe that the city was probably destroyed in a war. Could it have been the Trojan War? Maybe, but it’s pretty much impossible to know for certain. FYI Comic Category:BrainPOP Episodes Category:English Category:Famous Authors & Books Category:Social Studies Category:Ancient Cultures Category:Famous Historical Figures Category:World History Category:2008 Episodes Category:Episodes in March Category:Hispanic Heritage